Tuesday, 28 July 2015

Lex Machina Trademark Litigation Report: Trademark Litigation Alive and Well in the U.S.

Lex Machina, the IP data analytics firm, recently released its
"teaser" Trademark Litigation Report (Report).The
Report reviews and gleans insight from U.S. District Court trademark cases
pending between 2009 to March 31, 2015.The
Press Release for the Report notes several eye-catching statistics:

[Over] 6,900 . . . cases where permanent injunctions were
granted, and . . . over $9 billion in cumulative damages awarded in trademark
cases since 2009. More than 24,000 trademark cases have been filed since
2009, with over 4,000 new cases filed in 2014 alone.

Unsurprisingly, trademark litigation is ubiquitous given the value of
brands and the nature of the law itself, which encourages litigation to protect
and expand the legal protection of a trademark. However, the sheer number of suits is always impressive to see. The Report dives into several case
studies concerning specific brand owners.Interestingly, Deckers ($3.4 billion) and Chanel (and almost $1 billion)
account for almost half of the damages awarded.Moreover, the vast majority of the damages awarded come after a default
judgment—most of the rest result from consent judgments.It would be interesting to know how much is
actually collected.

Some of the other interesting information in the Report concerns the
amount of time it takes to obtain various types of injunctions, top districts
for trademark and related filings, and data concerning types of judgments and
findings by the courts reviewed.For
example, the Report notes that permanent injunctions are issued faster in cases
only involving trademark claims as opposed to cases involving trademark and
patent or copyright claims.Moreover, preliminary
injunctions in cybersquatting cases alone are issued faster than trademark
claims alone. The top five districts for
trademark filings include two California districts: the Central District (coming
in first by far) and the Northern District.

The Report utilizes, in part, the following methodology in collecting
data:

This report draws on
data from Lex Machina’s proprietary intellectual property litigation database. Although
some of our data is derived from litigation information publicly available from
PACER (the federal court system’s document website), Lex Machina applies
additional layers of intelligence to bring consistency to, and ensure the
completeness of, the data. Beyond the automation, key areas of Lex Machina’s
data are either human-reviewed or hand-coded by a dedicated team of attorneys
to ensure accuracy.

You can obtain a copy of the Report by registering
with Lex Machina here.It is a quick and interesting read. Has there been a similar study on trademark litigation in other parts of the world?

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